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Title: The Brand Story - A Tale Worth Telling
Author: Jerry Bader
Article:
THE BRAND STORY - A TALE WORTH TELLING
Every Business Has A Story To Tell
Everybody likes a good story and why not? Stories are
entertaining, instructive, engaging and above all human; they
connect people to people, and businesses to customers. Stories
are about communication and communication is the essence of
marketing.
We have at our disposal the greatest communication tool the
world has ever known, the Internet, and we are wasting it.
Websites are used as if they were corporate brochures. The
techno-experts would even have us remove its visual and kinetic
elements, and turn it into an academic-style journal to please
the SEO gurus. We've been there and done that. Search engine
optimization is great, but who is going to go to your website if
it's boring to view, and tedious to operate. It's time to move
on.
A Communication Venue For The Rest of Us
The Web is a multimedia communication venue, and with increased
bandwidth and high-speed connections we can use it effectively
to deliver our marketing messages. But communication is a funny
thing, just because we talk, write and present information,
doesn't mean we are communicating.
Since I am advocating storytelling as a means of delivering your
marketing messages, I will illustrate my point - you guessed it
- with a story. In his book 'Information Anxiety,' Richard Saul
Wurman relates the following story attributed to U.S.
Representative Pat Swindall, of Georgia.
"A woman seeking a divorce went to visit her attorney. The first
question he asked her was, 'Do you have grounds?'
She replied, 'Yes, about two acres.'
'Perhaps I'm not making myself clear,' he said, 'Do you have a
grudge?'
'No, but we have a carport,' she responded.
'Let me try again. Does your husband beat you up?' he said
impatiently.
'No, generally I get up before he does,' she said.
At this point the attorney decided to try a different tack.
'Ma'am, are you sure you really want a divorce?'
'I don't want one at all, but my husband does. He claims we
have difficulty communicating.'"
It's a great story; it delivers everything a good story should
communicate: a appoint-of-view, information, emotion, and truth
about the human condition. The only thing that would make this
story more effective is if it was delivered by a human voice
that could add character, emphasis, and personality.
Marketing is nothing more than telling your story in an
effective way that embeds your identity into the minds of your
audience, connecting and communicating who you are, what you do,
and why your audience should be doing it with you. Branding and
positioning are the results, not the process.
So Tell Me A Story - It's All In the Delivery
One of the great storytellers of the last forty years is radio
broadcaster and commentator, Paul Harvey. In his hay-day he had
everything a great storyteller needed to make a memorable
impression: the voice, the cadence, the attitude, the writing,
and the 'schtick.'
He presented his commentaries as if he was reading the
newspaper, even, reading off the page numbers when he came back
from commercial, "Page Two." He would craft his stories by
introducing the listener to a character in the most casual way,
perhaps by referring to him or her by a diminutive first name.
By the end of the story, he would tell you who this person
really was and invariably it was someone famous, and the story
he told revealed something unusual or hidden in this person's
background. Each story had a strong point-of-view, and each
commentary was ended with the tag line, "... and now you know
the rest of the story." Paul Harvey's little radio commentaries
are a quintessential example of Sonic Personality© (see
http://www.sonicpersonality.com).
"Content is Not Communication"
Web experts are always talking about 'content' and how 'content
is king' on the Web, but as Curt Cloninger wrote in his article
'A Case for Web Storytelling' "content is not communication."
Content just lies there until it is delivered in some proactive
manner, and plain text content on your website is as far from
proactive as you can get. Stories must be communicated
effectively if you want to deliver your intended message. Left
alone, your audience will scan, skip, misinterpret and generally
overlook the point you are trying to convey. The only effective
way to make sure your audience doesn't misconstrue the message
of your story is to deliver it in a human voice: one with
character, cadence, accent, language, and an attitude that
represents who you are. A story well told creates expectations
and relevance; it creates image and identity, and it focuses on
the business promise you must fulfill.
Fakers Need Not Apply
As good as your storyteller is, he or she cannot overcome a
fake. You must be honest to who you are, and what you really do.
Every business has a character, and an operational ethos. Trying
to communicate a message that conflicts with that corporate
character is a prescription for failure. Apple and Dell are both
good companies, but Apple Computer is cutting-edge; Dell is not.
Walmart and The Gap are both successful companies, but The Gap
is cool and Walmart is Walmart. No matter how hard a company
tries, they can't be something they are not, and trying can only
create false expectations, confusion and failure.
A Blueprint for Creating Your Brand Story
Whether you write the story yourself, or you hire someone to
write it for you, you must first gather the necessary material.
The easiest way to collect material is to create a series of
questions that when answered reveal the Brand Story. Think of
the process as an interview.
The Brand Story Interview 1. What was the original vision of the
company? 2. Who were the company's founding fathers? 3. How was
the company started? 4. What was the guiding entrepreneurial
philosophy? 5. Is there a creative genius or technical wizard
behind your vision? 6. What is the big idea behind your product
or service? 7. What does your product or service do for your
target audience? 8. Does your vision rely on quality, cost, or
uniqueness of your a. Products, b. Services, c. Knowledge, or d.
Delivery system? 9. Has your focus changed since the company was
founded? 10. What is your vision for the future?
Once the material is collected it must then be put into story
form. You are not writing a research paper, nor are you creating
ad copy. You are telling a story, and as such, it should be
written as a story. If as suggested you're delivering the story
using audio, you should write it for the spoken word and not for
print. There are a variety of multimedia styles that can be used
ranging from the radio commentary style of Paul Harvey to the
PBS documentary style of Ken Burns featuring accompanying
graphics and photography.
It's Not Just The Story, It's How You Tell It
If you've ever tried to tell a joke you heard from a
professional comedian and messed it up, you know how important
the telling of a story is. It's not just the words; it's the
rhythm, cadence, accent, intonation, point-of-view, and attitude
that makes the story funny, memorable, interesting or
instructive.
Our previous article entitled 'The Sound of Business' goes into
detail on how the concept of Sonic Personality©
(http://www.sonicpersonality.com) delivers marketing messages
and Brand Stories in a compelling, inventive, entertaining, and
memorable way. It explains the power of the human voice and the
necessity of integrating it into your website.
The Medium Is the Message
It is hard to believe that there are any companies of any size
or sophistication that don't have a website, but it is even
harder to understand how so many companies with websites, have
no idea what the Web is.
The Web is typically described in technical terms, but in fact
the Web is merely a venue designed for communication, a place
where conversations take place, where information is exchanged,
and where transactions are conducted. If you can accept the idea
that the Web exists to further your communication efforts, then
it stands to reason that delivering your story is your website's
'raison d'etre.' And without the sound of the human voice, the
delivery of emotional connective content, and the conveyance of
clever, interesting, useful, entertaining, and compelling
stories, the Web is a wasteland, an uncommunitive environment of
random confusion.
About the author:
Jerry Bader, is a partner in MRPwebmedia, a website design firm
that specializes in creating multimedia websites that enhance
their clients business opportunities by delivering their
marketing messages using the latest audio, video, Flash, and
interactive techniques.
MRPwebmedia developed the Sonic Personalities© concept that
effectively conveys your brand, image and message on websites
and DVD/CD presentations using custom-crafted voice-overs.
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